BIMSTEC: Caught in the crossfire of politics of citizenship

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Everybody knows that the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) can be an international organisation comprising of seven countries of South and Southeast Asia, working on multilateral free trade, connectivity development, counter-terrorism, etc, to improve regional growth and commerce.

There is no point elaborating on that. We all know the way the Northeast is meant to be benefited by this organisation and since 2000 there's been a liberal dose of hope sprinkled over us.

Bolstered by that hope, which most of us here in the area share, I had opted the extra mile, and also had driven an automobile completely from Bangkok to Guwahati to learn the region first hand and explore the opportunity of doing business aswell as to inspire my friends and my viewers that the whole of Southeast Asia is in inside our hands.

It was a seamless drive from Bangkok to Imphal. Anyway, after Imphal, it was tough, indeed very tough as the national highway has been expanded. Hopefully, shortly the construction work will be completed, and it'll be a beautiful drive from Guwahati to Bangkok and the real meaning of BIMSTEC shall emerge.

I am confident that tourism sector will certainly prosper as the visa regime in addition has been relaxed. At the Myanmar side, the immigration facilities are in better position than India because they have realised that India will probably be a very big market as places like Bagan, Inle and Mandalay are going to attract huge crowds from the Northeastern region earlier than later.

India-Bangladesh

But I am worried about Bangladesh. You prefer it or not, they are our most significant neighbour, and there are vast similarities between both countries for the natural progression of trade and commerce.

I always feel that both countries with such long border and having similar language and lifestyle must have a much higher business, relationship and both states must draw strength from the other person and prosper.

But also for decades, an antiBangladeshi domestic rhetoric has been permitted to go shriller, turning Bangladesh almost into an enemy state in the general public narrative by the energy that be.

Bangladesh and Northeast India share a 1,939-kilometre-long international border, including 262 km in Assam, 856 km in Tripura, 180 km in Mizoram, 443 km in Meghalaya.

But I usually ask myself, have we given justice to Bangladesh inside our own mind? Are we not passively inserting the country and its own persons in the neurons of our brain something of a negative source of energy?

Are we not being raised with the daily diet of how land-hungry Bangladeshis are trying to enter into Assam, Northeast India or rest of India for their survival?
Source: https://www.eastmojo.com

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